The Civil War and Emancipation in St. Louis

Part of the National Park Service series The History of Slavery in St. Louis.

Claiming citizenship and freedom

When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, the U.S. Army quickly moved to control St. Louis and imposed martial law, under which anyone suspected of supporting the Confederacy could be arrested, tried and jailed. Enslaved people seized the moment to claim freedom for themselves and their families. Enslaved women often reported disloyal enslavers to the army, showing their support for the Union. Black men could not fight for the United States until 1863, but they went to army camps to offer their services, cooking, cleaning, nursing and doing other work; women and children were sometimes welcomed into the camps too. In turning to the army, enslaved St. Louisans showed they understood the war as a fight over slavery, and were ready to support the Union.

Spottswood Rice

Spottswood Rice's enlistment paper; he signed with an X. National Archives and Records Administration.

Spottswood Rice (1819–1907) was born enslaved in Virginia and grew up in Howard County, Missouri. After the Emancipation Proclamation he offered his services to the 67th U.S. Colored Troops near Kansas City, and in the autumn of 1864 he was sent to the hospital at Benton Barracks in St. Louis to recover from rheumatism.

Kitty Diggs, a white enslaver in Howard County, held Rice's wife and children. Writing from St. Louis, Rice told her he meant to free his daughters Mary and Cora "if it cost me my life." Diggs had accused him of wanting to "steal" his children; she was, he replied, "the first Christian that I ever heard say that a man could steal his own children, especially out of human bondage." He warned that 1,600 white and Black soldiers would come to her plantation to free them. The attack never came, but Mary and Cora were reunited with their family: the 1880 census lists them living with their parents in St. Louis, where Rice had become a minister of the African Methodist Church.

Did the Emancipation Proclamation apply to Missouri?

No. Lincoln's proclamation freed enslaved people only in Confederate states in active rebellion; Missouri stayed in the Union and was exempt. But the fighting steadily destroyed slavery all the same, and enslaved people understood what the proclamation meant even where it did not apply. Julia Dent Grant recalled that by early 1864 all the enslaved people at her father's White Haven home had simply left, perhaps emboldened by it. On January 11, 1865, a state constitutional convention abolished slavery in Missouri, and the 13th Amendment abolished it nationwide that December.

U.S. Colored Troops and Benton Barracks

Sheet music for "Benton Barracks Parade March" by Julius Tenzler. Public domain.

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it opened the way for Black men to serve as U.S. soldiers, and Black Missourians, most of them enslaved, joined United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments.

St. Louis's largest army post, Benton Barracks, stood where Fairgrounds Park is now, in North St. Louis. It trained new soldiers, treated the wounded, and stored food and supplies. In 1863 and 1864 four USCT regiments, the 62nd, 65th, 67th and 68th, were organised and trained there, and served with distinction for the rest of the war.

The men of the 62nd and 65th also pressed for the education of Black children in Missouri. While learning to read and write themselves, they pooled their army pay to help found a school, which became Lincoln Institute (now Lincoln University) in Jefferson City in 1866, Missouri's first institution of higher education for Black students. A statue on the campus honours them.

Benton Barracks during the Civil War. Missouri Historical Society.

Sources

• National Park Service, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, "The Civil War and Emancipation in St. Louis." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-civil-war-and-emancipation-in-st-louis.htm
• In the series: previous, Free People of Color in St. Louis; next, Black Life in St. Louis During Reconstruction.
• Not reproduced here: a colourised photograph of a U.S. Colored Troops soldier at Benton Barracks, credited to a private colourisation project, and a photograph of the modern statue at Lincoln University.
• Left out: the original's count of Black Missourians who served in the U.S. Colored Troops, which appears to be mistaken.